Charlie Dalton In: How Not To Do Lines
by Opal Zene
Summary: My first published fanfic! I'm not bothered if you don't review, but it'd be nice to know if someone is actually reading this... Anyway, it's about Charlie Dalton because he rules all :P and how he tries to get out of doing lines...


_Ok guys, this is my first (published) fanfic, so don't be mean and make me cry... just a random one off featuring Charlie Dalton (coz he's such a fab character :P hope I can do him justice) and his History homework. (An essay i was set, actually... ) Muhaaa. Just me having fun (This is set before the film, or during the film, you decide. I'm not bothered, it has no relevance to anything else )_

"So, using these seven sources, I want an 10 page essay entitled: "Was General Haig the 'Butcher of The Somme'?" for Friday, please." Mr. Thoener scowled around at the class, daring anyone to ask him to repeat the assignment. No one rose to the challenge, everyone hastily scrawling the title onto some paper, the back of their hand - or perhaps just watching their neighbour copy it down, mentally noting to plead with them for it later. Unsurprisingly, the latter group contained Charlie Dalton, who was tapping his pencil quite unconcernedly off his desk.

"Mr. Dalton, stop that, if you'd please," Mr. Thoener breathed rather heavily through his nose, looking irritated. Charlie stopped, smirking slightly. Mr. Thoener had a vein in the side of his head that throbbed violently when he was agitated. It was his pupil's personal belief that one day, it may well pop. Charlie, for one, quite enjoyed pushing the vein to its limits.

"Sir?" Charlie asked suddenly, "Is there more than one answer to this essay?"

"Yes."

"Well then, what's the point?" he continued bluntly.

"The point, Mr. Dalton, is to help you analyse evidence and come to your own conclusion!" Mr. Thoener exclaimed heatedly.

"But everyones' conclusions are going to be different?"

"Well, that's history! Divided opinions are part of this subject, and part of life."

"Well, this essay's pointless then." Charlie said as reasonably as he could, grinning nonetheless. "If we're all going to come up with different conclusions, there's no point in writing it. We'd've already made up our minds by now." He was grasping at straws – winding Mr. Thoener up was revenge enough for the essay.

"Pointless as it may seem to you, Mr. Dalton, I'm still setting you the assignment. And I'll make it 11 pages for your cheek."

The class moaned.

"Oh, but sir!" Charlie feigned mock horror "You can't punish me for not wanting to do it. Divided opinions are part of life, you told us so yourself!"

* * *

"Well?" Neil had waited outside the classroom for Charlie, and by this time he was bursting with curiousity. "What happened? Did he shout?"

"No, I got lines." Charlie raised an eyebrow. "500 times: "I shall not contradict my teacher"."

"For when?"

"Tomorrow." Charlie shrugged it off, grinning.

"Don't look so smug about it! That's a lot of lines!"

"Yeah, but I have a plan."

"Oh?" Neil looked amused.

"You may mock me now," Charlie drawled, pointing an accusatory finger at Neil, "but when I've discovered a foolproof way to do 500 lines with minimum effort-"

"Pigs'll fly." Neil laughed, giving Charlie a friendly push.

"They will." Charlie declared "When I give 'em wings."

"Yeah... see you later, Charlie." Neil rolled his eyes skywards as he pushed open the door to his room. "Common room? Later? If you're not still slaving away..."

"Oh, I won't be." Charlie said confidently, swaggering slightly as he made his way to his own room.

* * *

Neil was barely in his room for more than a minute before Charlie burst in, grinning triumphantly as he brandished a pencil and paper.

"Gimme some more of that stuff you were using last night to copy Knox's diagram." he demanded, flopping onto Neil's bed, a smug expression on his face.

"Why?" Neil asked suspiciously, curious despite himself."

"I only had a little bit, and I ran out testing it!" Charlie waved something in Neil's face. "Aww, c'mon."

"Only some." Neil handed over some of the thin paper, similar to tracing or greasproof paper, but not quite the same.

"That's enough." Charlie took it enthusiastically, rested it on his paper, and began writing industrially.

"What're you-" Neil began, but was shushed by Charlie, who flourished the thin paper, having written his set line 10 times, fairly neatly (for Charlie).

"Now, watch the genius!" Charlie pressed the thin paper onto his normal paper, ran his hand over it a few times, then peeled it off, revealing 10 lines that looked handwritten on the paper. Looking smug, he repeated this twice more, until he had 30 lines on the paper.

"Very clever." Neil said, choking back a laugh.

"Well, sound more enthusiastic, why don't you?" Charlie smirked, pointing at the paper. "This is revolutionary!"

"Yeah, maybe..." Neil snorted, taking the paper from Charlie. "Two problems though," he began, ignoring Charlie protesting. "Firstly, you can only do three prints before it starts looking faint."

"But it halves the work at least!" Charlie folded his arms in a satisfied way.

"Second problem," continued Neil, oblivious to Charlie "This is rather a large drawback..." Neil laughed the lines back to Charlie. "Just read it to me. See if it makes sense."

"Course it makes sense..." Charlie glanced down at the paper, looked up at Neil, back at the paper, and swore.

"Only problem is... it's all backwards." Neil watched Charlie's expression with amusement.

"Easily put right." Charlie said, undeterred. "I just need to trace this backwards from now on."

"Hah." Neil was still laughing.

"Oh, shut up." Charlie attempted to give Neil a friendly smack on the head. "It's still going to save me loads of work!"

"Yeah..." Neil shrugged in defeat. "You win."

Charlie looked down at the writing appraisingly. "It'll fool Mr. Thoener, alright." He said smugly, grinning.

* * *

"Mr. Dalton, I'm confident you have remembered your lines?" Mr. Thoener asked sternly, rapping on Charlie's table with his ruler.

"Yessir." Charlie said, in a suitably meek voice, struggling to keep the victorious edge under check. Mr. Thoener eyed him warily.

"You're a little quite today, I must say." He held a hand out for Charlie's papers.

"Well, Mr. Thoener," Charlie sighed melodramatically "It's probably all from working so hard last night to finish the lines..."

"Enough of that, or you'll be doing it tonight too."

"Oh, we wouldn't want that, sir, would we?" Charlie cocked his head to one side, grinning.

"The papers, boy." Mr. Thoener had the beginnings of a pulsing movement in his forehead. Charlie handed a few sheets of suitably scruffy paper, mentally congratulating Neil on his idea to bend the corners a little. Mr. Thoener rustled through the papers critically, grunted in approval, and returned to his desk.

"Page 162, questions 1 – 5, before the bell goes." he barked, sitting down.

Charlie stretched in his chair, shooting Neil a triumphant look, who gave him a discreet thumbs up in return. Charlie opened his own dog-eared copy of the history book to page 162, and he'd only just begun to scrawl an answer to question one when he felt someone loom over him.

"Sir?" he said innocently, eyes wide.

"Which subjects do we learn at this school, Mr. Dalton?" Mr. Thoener's vein was pulsing fiercely, and as Charlie eyed it apprehensively, he supposed he had better give a civil answer.

"English, Maths..." he rattled off the subjects, and finished, watching his teacher.

"Quite sure about that?" Mr. Thoener snapped.

"Quite, Mr. Thoener." Charlie was genuinely confused.

"So...nowhere in there is there: 'Mirror-writing?' " Mr. Thoener narrowed his eyes, and turned to return to his own desk.

"Um... no... sir..." Charlie half closed his eyes in dread, making a guess at what this was about.

"Well... I wonder if you could explain this." His teacher had found a paper on his desk, covered in Charlie's handwriting – backwards. At he turned his back briefly, Charlie saw Neil mouth something at him that looked like: 'You left the first sheet in?" Mr. Thoener was now at Charlie's desk, thrusting his own backwards lines in his face.

"What precisely, does this mean?" The vein was throbbing.

"Um... I think it says 'I shall not contradict my teacher'." Charlie said, somewhat faintly.

"And how, do you imagine, it came to be backwards?"

"Perhaps... I rested another sheet of paper on top of it... and accidentally it seems to have marked this side with my lines backwards..." Charlie said hopefully.

"You now what I think, Mr. Dalton?"

"What do you think, Mr. Thoener?" Charlie winced.

"I think you're a dirty cheat and liar, and should do these lines again, doubled, in my presence." His teacher was positively fuming. "What do you think?"

"I think you should learn to practise what you preach, sir." Charlie couldn't resist fighting, even as he was going down. "You know, to not complain about divided opinions."

"Why is that, Mr. Dalton?" Mr. Thoener's voice had reached a dangerously low level.

"Well, when you set me those lines, sir, you never said I wasn't to do it how I liked. So, your opinion was that I do them all by hand, and my opinion was that I do it my own way." Charlie dared a winning grin, knowing that now, whatever he did, he'd probably never stop writing lines until the end of the term. He knew, too, that of this matter, his teacher and him were not of divided opinions.


End file.
